First of all, what should your background be? To get the most out the course, you already be a pretty good Java programmer. We will not cover any Java syntax. In particular, you should be comfortable with the notions of classes, interfaces, applications and applets. You don't need any background in distributed objects, however.
When you finish the course, you should have a pretty good idea about how distributed objects work in Java. You should also be able to code simple programs using either RMI or CORBA.
Now on to our agenda!